“Look at them!” spouted Monty, and by his suddenness I knew he was about to hold forth at some length.  “You’ll learn that the Army, when on active service, does an astonishing amount of waiting; and Tommy does an astonishing amount of reclining.  Lying down, while you wait to get started, is two-thirds of the Army’s work.  Directly the Army begins to wait, Tommy relieves his aching back and shoulders of equipment, and reclines.  Quite right, too.  There’s no other profession in the world, where, with perfect dutifulness, you can spend so much time on your back.  Active Service is two-parts Inaction—­”

What more of his views Monty would have expounded I can’t say, for a voice yelled from the promenade-deck above us: 

“You there!  What’s your rank?”

I jumped out of my skin, and Doe out of his, for we thought the voice was addressing us, Monty turned without agitation and looked up at the speaker.  It was Major Hardy.  He was leaning against the deck-rail, and had fixed with his monocle the nearest recumbent soldier.  This soldier was just the other side of us, so the Major was obliged to shout over our heads.

“What’s your rank?” he repeated.  “Come along, my man.  Get a move on.  Jump to it.  What’s your rank?”

The Tommy, flurried by this surprise attack, climbed on to his feet, came to attention, and said: 

“Inniskillings, sir.”

“Damn the man—­what,” cried the Major.  “What’s your rank?  I said.”

“What, sir?” respectfully inquired the Tommy, whose powers of apprehension had been disorganised by so sudden a raid.

The Major adopted two methods calculated to penetrate the soldier’s intelligence:  he leant over the rail, and he spoke very slowly.

“What’s—­your—­bloody—­rank?  Are you a general, or a private?”

“No, sir,” answered the bewildered Tommy.

“Oh, God damn you to hell!  What’s your rank?”

“Oh, private, sir.”

“Then, for Christ’s sake, go and do some work.  What are privates for?  Get that kit of mine from the quay.”

The Major dropped his monocle on his chest, and looked down at us.

“Sorry, padre,” he said, and walked away.

I watched till he was out of sight, and then said indignantly: 

“So he jolly well ought to have apologised.”

“And he did,” retorted Monty.  “Be just to him.  It took me six months—­”

“He’s off,” thought I.

“—­to get the Army’s bad language into proportion.  At first I opened on it with my heavies in sermon after sermon.  Then I saw proportion, and decided on a tariff, allowing an officer a ‘damn’ and a man a ‘bloody.’  Winter and Neuve Chapelle taught me the rock-bottom level on which we are fighting this war, and I spiked my guns.  No one has a right to condemn them, who hasn’t floundered in mud under shell-fire.”